


Aftershocks

by EchoThruTheWoods



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 12:50:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20115376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoThruTheWoods/pseuds/EchoThruTheWoods
Summary: It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it. Reno struggles with the fact that it happened to be him.





	Aftershocks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [makoheadrush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/makoheadrush/gifts).

> According to experts, there are (at least) five stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

(1)

The droning voice of the newscast buzzes like a kimara.

_ “The catastrophic failure of the pillar supporting the plate above Sector Seven has resulted, at last count, in the deaths of over four thousand people. President Shinra has promised a full investigation…” _

“That’s bullshit,” Reno growls. The old radio sitting at his feet is the cheap, clunky kind that costs a few gil and runs on batteries. It was the first thing he’d bought with his first paycheck from the Turks.

He’s got a beer in one hand, the other hand wrapped around the stump of a railing sticking out of a truncated girder. “Can’t be that many. That’s just crazy talk.”

He’s not supposed to be up here, perched like a buzzard above the destruction of Sector Seven. A cloud of dust still hovers over the rubble, its burnt-mako stench stinging his tongue. The wind buffets him, and instinct rocks him on the balls of his feet, catching his balance. 

_ “Current estimates of the dead don’t include the missing, who number at least twice that many…” _

He raises his foot over the radio, brings it down hard. Plastic crunches, flattens under his boot, the nattering voice cut off. He kicks the wreckage out into space; it plunges down into the twisted canyons of pancaked roofs and crumpled walls, just another piece of detritus. 

He chugs the beer, the bottle wet and cold and slippery in his grip. Flings it overhand, tumbling end over end into that yawning, empty air, caught in a flare of sunlight that shouldn’t be there either. This was perpetual twilight’s realm.

The gaping hole is obscene. He hears the bottle smash, somewhere down below, pathetic echo of the sound that lives forever in his head.

_ Boom  _ didn’t do it justice. It had rolled out of the earth, up through his bowels, shaken him so hard the vertebrae rattled from his skull to his tailbone and back again. That was before the impact even registered, before the shockwave had knocked him on his ass.

He lives with that sound. Sleeps with it, showers with it, eats it for breakfast. Carries it in his core, the unholy child of earthly power and malice aforethought. Yet it’s not a presence; it’s an absence, a void. It reverberates, goes on and on, as though that day had never ended.

“Can’t be twelve-fucking-thousand,” he says, hoarse, determined. “Can’t be.”

\-----

(2)

The day he received the assignment is seared into his brain.

“Why’s it gotta be me? Huh? I ain’t the only one that knows how to plant charges!”

There is no reply, only a long-suffering sigh. Reno knows mockery, knows sarcasm; he is a master of both. Silence is something he can’t parse. 

“Oh,  _ now  _ I get it,” he sneers. “You want to clean out a nest of gutter rats, you send another gutter rat. That makes it real clear where I stand. What if I said no, huh? What if I don't?”

The best poker face in the business turns toward him. Permafrost, pristine and perfect.

“Are you a member of this organization?” Tseng says. “If not, please turn in your credentials.”

It’s more than a threat. Turks don’t quit. They’re never outright  _ fired _ . Not exactly.

Only one man has ever gotten away with it. Reno knows he won’t be the second.

_ “Fine, _ I don’t care,” he snarls, more bravado than conviction, but bravado’s served him well thus far. He walks away, while he still can. “Bahamut’s balls, this place is a fucking  _ joke.” _

Afterward--once the dust has settled,  _ ha _ , another joke--he sits on the platform, on the wrong side of the yellow safety ropes, where the borders of Sectors Seven and Eight once met. And he’s still not laughing.

He wants to blame AVALANCHE. They’re the reason for all of this. Bunch of freaks causing trouble, ruining lives. Hadn’t those assholes done their own share of damage? They’d killed people, threatened to kill more, tried to destroy everything Shinra had built. Aren’t their hands just as bloody as his? 

But in the stifling solitude of his nights, in the green haze of dawn at the muddy footprint of the crushed pillar, it isn’t AVALANCHE he hates.

\-----

(3)

Reno’s never been a church-goer. He’s never worshipped gods, never even been sure they’re real. If they are, they’re probably lounging around on fat cushions, eating bon-bons. If they see him at all, it’s only to point and laugh. 

He sits on the roof of the Sector Seven train platform, now less than five feet above the ground. There’s a crack down the middle of it, and right in the center of the facade, above the shattered double doors, is a clock with a bronze face and verdigrised brass hands, stuck at the time the plate fell.

He can reach down and touch it. Move the hands however he wants to, with a bit of effort. He can turn back time, except not really. That’s not a power that’s given to a Turk.

He knows how the world works. No one gets something for nothing. Everything has a price. 

What’s it worth to the gods, to make it happen? To turn time backward, creaking and groaning, to the moment before he set off the charges that brought the pillar down?

The minute hand is gritty with dust and grime, stiff and unyielding. He’s got nothing to bargain with, nothing a god would want that they couldn’t simply take any time they liked. Pull the hand counter-clockwise, faster and faster, spinning like a cartoon timepiece, like a roulette wheel in a rigged game of chance.

“Around and around and around she goes,” he sing-songs, “and where she stops, nobody...”

_ He  _ knows. 

\-----

(4)

He can’t drink it away, fuck it away, erase it with any vice known to man, and he’s on speaking terms with most of them. Booze is weak, drugs are lame, sex is excruciatingly dull. He sleeps instead, and that works, until it doesn’t. 

He’s just tired. It’s got nothing to do with the numbered dead, the posters with their blurry faces of the missing, the slick propaganda of the Public Relations office. He’s just really fucking tired of all of it. Who wouldn’t be?

He’s even tired of his own unwashed, lazy, stupid self. Lying in bed all day, on gritty, sweaty sheets, smoking, stuffing stale chips in his mouth. Hasn’t even changed his underwear for a week. What a loser. Serve him right if the roof fell in---

He barely makes it to the toilet before puking up everything all the way back to last Sunday’s lunch. It’s disgusting, but at least it’s a sign of life. The thought sends him into convulsive laughter that devolves into tears and oh hell no, he’s not doing this  _ again _ .

But he does.

When he’s done, he sits on the cold linoleum floor until the shaking stops. Takes inventory, of a sort. He’s alive. In one piece. Has a job, a life, and don’t they say life goes on? Ain’t  _ that  _ a crock?

He can’t forget. He can’t undo it. Can’t sleep, can’t stay awake, not the way he should be, focused and sharp, ready for anything. Rude says nothing, just flows smoothly into back-up mode, piloting, picking up extra shifts. Tseng never mentions Reno’s initial refusal of the job. He goes on filling Veld’s shoes, but he won’t meet Reno’s eyes.

No one in the office talks about it. It’s all on Reno’s shoulders. Day and night, he walks in the ruins, avoiding the scavengers, the weepers and searchers. They’re all the same to him, wraiths out of time, shadows without substance.

He walks with the dead, too real, too present to ignore.

In his wallet, folded into a small square, is a faded photograph of an old woman smiling over a birthday cake, the candle flames reflected in her eyeglasses. He’d found it on the ground in the remains of Sector Seven, pinned down by a splintered wooden beam.

He doesn’t know her name. She could be anyone. She’d been  _ someone _ .

His hand, thin-boned, lies on his knee, long blue veins like streaky bruises showing through pale skin. He never did understand why veins look blue when they’re full of red, red blood. The hand offends him. He thinks, not for the first time, of cutting it off. 

But he’s a coward, or a pragmatist. He keeps the hand, doesn’t reach for the razor on the edge of the sink. He stands on slightly wobbly legs, raises his head. If he moves fast, he’ll only be an hour or so late for work.

He knows Tseng won’t say a word.

\-----

(5)

‘The thing is,” Reno says over a lukewarm beer, “the thing is, I did ‘em a favor. Because--you know why? Because life  _ sucks  _ under the plate. It’s rain dripping on your head at night and dog shit on your shoes. I should know.”

“Uh huh.” Rude tilts his head back, tips his beer bottle to get the last of it. 

“You think ol’ Mag’s place is still there?”

“That dive bar you drank in? Why would it be?”

“Because that would be awesome.”

“And life operates that way in your world?”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Rude opens another bottle, hands it to Reno. Keep him drinking, keep him talking. That’s the plan, Reno’s not dumb. So far, it’s worked. So far.

It’s Saturday. The clean-up crews are gone, their machines stilled, dark hulking shapes in a small, cleared space.

“You know what, man? There’s too much sky up there. It ain’t natural.”

“The sky  _ is  _ natural. Having steel and concrete over your head isn’t.”

“Works for me. Worked.” Reno looks down at the pock-marked gray surface he sits on. “Feels safe, y’know?” he mumbles.

“Wasn’t safe for them, was it?”

“Yeah, it was.” Reno waves a hand vaguely skyward. “While it was up there, where it belonged.”

“You don’t have to come out here,” Rude points out, eminently reasonable. 

“Yeah, I do. Scene of the crime, yada, yada.  _ You  _ don’t, though.”

Rude doesn’t argue. They’re both there, sitting on the cracked asphalt, backs to a ramshackle wall, surrounded by rubble and backhoes and unquiet spirits.

It’s Reno’s baggage to carry until he dies, and faces whatever comes next. 

If someone’s there to judge him, gods or ghosts, that’s their right. His right is to own it, and there’s a kind of peace in that.

It’s not much, but it’s enough to go on with. It has to be.

So he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus points if you spot the line I stole nearly verbatim from a popular 1960s TV show. ;)
> 
> UPDATE: Okay, for those who were wondering what I was talking about, here's the answer.
> 
> The line, "Are you a member of this organization?" comes from the 1960s TV show, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."
> 
> As far as I remember, the scene was this: The spy Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn, is haranguing his boss, Mr. Waverly, played by Leo G. Carroll, about his missing partner, Ilya Kuryakin, played by David McCallum. For Big Important Reasons (which I have forgotten), Waverly will not allow Solo to go looking for Kuryakin, and when Solo tries to insist, Waverly says: "Are you a member of this organization? If not, may I have your credentials?" - delivered in a frosty, matter-of-fact, don't-push-me tone of voice that I'm sure Tseng is fully capable of. I changed the line just a bit, but the gist is there. ;)


End file.
